by Matt Forbeck
“Think of it as a reward for your heroism today,” Tom said.
“Don’t encourage them,” Director Mendez said.
“What, like you did with us?” Tom smiled.
The director did not see the humor in the comment. “Exactly.”
Bakar waited for Kasha to finish with her duties while the other three departed. Gudam gave the Sangheili a big hug, and Kareem bumped fists with him. Molly only gave him an understanding nod, which he returned.
Molly, Kareem, and Gudam got to ride in the rear bed of a Warthog, with the Spartans in the front. Molly had only seen such vehicles on vids, and she couldn’t believe she was in one now with a pair of Spartans. She did her best to stifle her smile.
“Why doesn’t this Warthog have a weapons mount in the back?” Molly asked Lucy, who was driving.
“Takes up too much space. This format’s for scouting and transport. We sometimes risk going weaponless to be able to move more stuff or to have a lower energy profile.”
Molly reflected on that for a moment. This vehicle was designed from the ground up for war, but with its weapon removed, it was significantly less threatening. It still looked and operated like a Warthog, but it became a means of transportation rather than a tool to kill things.
In a strange way, it reminded her of Bakar. The Sangheili built their people from the ground up for war, but he had refused that path. He didn’t desire to follow his father or brother on their own campaigns, but rather to carve his own destiny, one that didn’t involve bloodshed or the suffering of others—even at great cost to himself.
For the first time, Molly felt like she got Bakar.
The Warthog drove out to an area on the edge of Paxopolis that looked like nothing more than a large hill. Given how flat the rest of the city was, Molly thought that this might have been where the construction crews had moved the dirt when they’d leveled the rest of the place. Maybe it had been just that originally, but it had now been put to better use.
A thick layer of grass covered the hill, but as they drew closer, Molly could see windows poking through the tall blades, dozens of them scattered all over the hilltop. The Warthog followed the road around to the far side of the hill and came to a halt in front of a circular door. The door irised open as the Warthog came to a stop, and a male Unggoy came waddling out at as fast as his legs would take him.
“Gudam! I’m so pleased you’re not dead!”
“It’s all right, Poppa Marfo.” She climbed down the side of the Warthog to the ground. “I wasn’t in any danger at all.” She stopped herself short, realizing she was maybe stretching the truth. “Well, not in any real danger. If that was the case, I’d already be dead, right?”
The older Unggoy swept her up into his arms and gave her a tight hug. “I’ve been trying to convince your mommas about schooling you here, in the hovel, permanently. I know that you do not want that, but you are not helping your case, little one.”
He set Gudam down and gave her a little nibble on the top of her head, which Molly took to be some show of parental affection.
Then Marfo turned toward the Warthog and spotted Molly and Kareem on the bed. “You must be the two humans who helped my little Gudam in that fight against those bullies the other day! I’ve heard so much about you, and I am so pleased to meet you! Can’t you join us for dinner?”
Molly swallowed hard, having completely forgotten about the offer earlier.
“We don’t have time for that right now,” Lucy said to the Unggoy. “The entire region’s about to go under lockdown.”
Marfo’s face fell. “Oh, that’s too bad. How long do we think that might last?”
“Until we find the ones who attacked the Repository today,” said Tom. “Could be hours; could be days. It’s for your own safety, sir.”
“I heard a rumor that they were from the Servants of the Abiding Truth!” The Unggoy spit on the ground. “Haven’t they done enough to us already? Why can’t they just leave us alone?”
“We’ll find them,” Lucy said. “And we will stop them.”
“I hope you do,” Marfo said. “And I hope you use bullets.”
Tom and Lucy exchanged a knowing look at the comment and then bid the Unggoy good-bye before taking off for the city proper. As they drove through town, the vehicle blew past all sorts of buildings and businesses being shut down and locked up in the center of Paxopolis, as though a major storm was about to roll through.
Molly turned to Kareem. “You mentioned that your mom studied Unggoy culture. That’s why you came here to Onyx. What did she do before that?”
“You mean as a career?”
“I mean, before alien cultures became a thing people could study.”
“She worked in the Navy. She was a combat doctor during the war.”
“From what I hear, she was a good one too,” Tom said from the front passenger seat.
“She did some research for ONI on the Unggoy anatomy and medical profile toward the end of the war and eventually became something of an expert on their culture. And that led to Onyx. What about you?” he asked Molly. “How’d you get here?”
Molly didn’t respond for several seconds, unsure what she was willing to share with Kareem and what she wanted to keep to herself.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to answer,” he said with reassuring eyes.
“No, it’s fine. My parents and sister died on Paris IV when the Covenant attacked. I was one of the only survivors. I was seven. My parents’ friends, Asha and Yong, adopted me. They’ve been working on Forerunner stuff since, well, longer than I can remember.”
“Sorry about your loss,” Kareem said with full sincerity. “I suppose that explains why you hate other species so much.”
“Hate?” Molly asked, surprised by his charge. “Why do you think I hate them? Is that why you’re so friendly with Bakar and Gudam? To compensate for me?”
Kareem snorted at that. “Not at all. Have you noticed how everyone else at the school treats them? Even the other members of their species? Most don’t want to be caught dead with them.”
“So you have to be the one to be better than that, right?”
“Why not?”
Molly couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. He was right, although she hadn’t given it a lot of thought. Ever since the self-defense classes the Spartans had begun, her appreciation for Gudam and even Bakar had grown—without her noticing. Today had confirmed that.
Although she still found herself reluctant to embrace it, Molly had somehow wound up with friends. Real friends.
Alien friends.
All right: friends of other species. But wow.
The Warthog reached Kareem’s house a moment later, and his mother came out to greet them. She was thin with big eyes and a fiercely sharp look, much like Kareem. She also shared his curly dark hair. Once he climbed down the side of the Warthog, she gathered him into an embrace and didn’t let go for a long moment.
“I’m okay, Mom. Seriously.”
“Your father’s on his way home.” She took Kareem’s face in both her hands and gazed into his eyes, looking for any signs of something. Damage? Fear? The concern in her face reminded Molly of her own mom and the way she’d held her hand in the car on that last day.
She shrugged the memory off as the Warthog peeled away.
Molly lived only a couple blocks away from Kareem, but the Spartans insisted on bringing her all the way there. “Orders are orders,” Lucy said. “Besides, we need to have a word with your parents.”
That made sense. Spartans—especially the ones helping manage security on the most important research site in human history—probably had a thousand more important things to do than escort a handful of children back home during lockdown. Whatever it was that Molly’s Newparents were working on, though, it rated high on the list of ONI’s concerns.
The Spartans weren’t babysitting. They were making sure nothing else happened that might distract Asha or Yong from their work—not even for a second.
> When the Warthog finally pulled up in front of Molly’s house, Yong was just walking onto the porch from work. He turned around and trotted out to the Warthog, helping Molly down from the vehicle. He pulled her close and held her in a tight embrace for a few seconds before saying anything.
“So glad to see you safe, kiddo,” he finally said before turning to Tom and Lucy. “Thanks for bringing her home.”
“It was our pleasure,” Tom said with an easy smile. “It’s not every day we get to cart around a real hero in the back of a Warthog.”
Molly grinned at that as Yong gave her another hug.
“Is Asha home as well?” Lucy asked. “Director Mendez wanted me to make sure to have the two of you check in with him as soon as you’re locked down here.”
“I just pulled up and haven’t had the chance to check. You don’t think what happened today had anything to do with what we’re studying?”
“That’s above our pay grade,” Tom said. “But you should give it some thought. Has it shown any signs of activity yet?”
Yong shook his head. “No. Not yet. Not for the last hundred thousand years at least.”
“Well, we’ve got orders to increase the level of security around the site,” Lucy said. “Just in case there’s a connection we’re not aware of. We’ll make sure to notify you and Asha if we need to get you out there. Till then, stay put where we can reach you.”
After the Spartans drove away, Molly and Yong walked up the porch stairs and into the house, where they found Asha coming down the stairs. She wasn’t quite as calm about the entire affair as Yong had seemed. Asha grabbed Molly and refused to let go.
Yong guided them to the living room couch, and the three of them sat down on it. Not until that moment did Molly realize just how shaky she still was. Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe it was just because of the way Asha looked at her, with dread in her eyes.
It was beginning to hit home. Molly had almost died today.
“Director Mendez told me everything,” Asha said while she held Molly. “You’re lucky you didn’t get killed.”
“At least none of the children were hurt,” Yong said. He brought Molly a cool drink and sat down next to them, putting his arms around them both.
“We would have been if Kasha hadn’t drawn that thing away from us,” Molly said. “She’s the real hero.”
“Really? You? Saying kind things about a Sangheili?” Yong said. “That’s some progress.”
Asha shot daggers at him with her eyes. “This is not the time for that.”
“Come on. I was complimenting her, Asha. I’m proud of how far she’s come. She’s learning to get along with other species. That’s incredible to me.”
“She was in real danger today, Yong!”
“Trust me, I know.” He reached across Molly and put a hand on Asha’s knee. “And she helped to save her headmaster and the rest of the students in her class. I’m in awe of her.”
“Well, I’m not!” Asha pulled back, and Molly could finally see the tears running down her face.
“What’s wrong? I’m fine.”
Asha was tough, and Molly had rarely ever seen her cry.
“I know.” Asha wiped her face dry. “I know. It’s just that . . . I want you to be safe, Molly. That’s the whole reason we brought you here. I didn’t want you to have to worry about this kind of stuff anymore. But even this place isn’t immune to it.”
Molly didn’t know what to say. Asha was right. Onyx wasn’t as safe as they’d thought it would be. No one could have expected Sangheili terrorists to find a way in, but they had.
“I could barely deal with living in Aranuka,” Asha continued. “Every day we were there—everything I saw—reminded me of the war. Of how the Covenant had almost taken away all that we had. After what happened to you on Paris IV, I— I just wanted to make sure nothing like that could ever hurt you again. I’m sorry, Molly. I know you didn’t want to come here.”
Molly leaned into her and held her tight. “It’s all right. I’m not upset about Onyx anymore. It was the right thing to do, coming here. You guys were right. ONI needs you here, and to be honest, I need to be here too,” she said, almost surprising herself. “And no place in the galaxy is perfectly safe, right? At least here, there’s a much smaller chance of being hit by a car while crossing the street.”
Asha actually laughed at that.
“I know just how you feel, Asha,” Yong said to her softly. “I question the decision to come here too, just about every day. But we’re here now, and we’re doing something important, something that could save lives. Humanity needs us here.”
“He’s right,” Molly said. “We belong here.”
She surprised herself by how much she really meant it. Maybe it was the trauma from all that had happened that day, but she felt more bonded, more connected to Onyx than she ever had to Aranuka. They weren’t just sitting on the sidelines out here, staring up at the sky and hoping that no one would come raining fire down on them. They were right in the heart of things, and they were going to make a difference.
Well, her Newparents were. Molly was just going to try to steer clear of any more trouble.
And survive.
Or so she hoped.
CHAPTER 19
* * *
* * *
Tom-B292 shook his head as he examined the bodies strewn about. “We can’t stick around here forever,” he said to the forensics team. “The creatures who killed all these people might come back.”
The leader of the team, Lieutenant Chao, cocked her head at Tom and flashed him a sardonic smirk. “You telling me there’s something out there a pair of Spartans can’t handle?”
“There are hundreds of planets’ worth of things out there,” Lucy-B091 said to Chao. “Creatures the Forerunners imported from countless worlds. You tell me what the odds are that we can take down them all.”
The smile faded from Chao’s face, and she set to urging the people under her command to work faster. They were not only cataloguing the data from the scene but bagging up the bodies to bring them back to Trevelyan, and it was slow, painstaking work. They could only hustle it along so much, Tom knew, but he wished they could manage more. It didn’t make sense to him to risk the living for the dead.
Lucy, who’d been watching over the people working inside the Forerunner structure, pinged Tom. When he glanced her way, he spotted her in the structure’s main doorway, and she motioned for him to follow her. He scanned the horizon all the way around them before he moved after her. The Spartan didn’t like leaving the place’s exterior unwatched.
Mendez had deployed the two Spartans and a small recovery team to a remote Forerunner site that had recently gone offline. After the events at the Repository, the director had suspicions about the source of the incursion, and this particular site was on his list.
“It wasn’t just the creatures.” Lucy escorted Tom into the structure. “See these blast marks along the walls?”
“Sangheili weapons?”
“You don’t get those kinds of splotches from bullets.”
Tom frowned at the scorch marks. “Mendez was right. This has to be connected to the portal we found being used at the Repository.”
“How could it not?”
Chao interrupted their conversation to report. Her brow was furrowed with a mixture of confusion and concern. “We found a few spots of Sangheili blood here, mixed in with the rest.”
“But no Sangheili bodies?”
She shook her head. “And no Sangheili were authorized to be out here at the time. The team assigned to be working here was one hundred percent human.”
Tom frowned at that. “Not good news.”
At Lucy’s insistence, Tom followed her deeper into the structure. There she showed him a large Forerunner portal that stood deactivated.
“There are rafakrit tracks leading up to it.” She pointed to odd patterns on the floor, faintly stamped in crimson blood.
“Any coming out?” Tom figure
d he already knew the answer, but he had to ask.
Lucy gave him a grim shake of her head. He stared at the portal, inspecting it. It looked like a massive doorway that opened onto nothing.
“It’s dead enough now. How’d they turn it on?”
Lucy shrugged. “Never seen anyone but a Huragok work one of these things.”
“That’s simple then,” Chao called from back down the hallway. She’d been listening in from a comfortable distance.
“How’s that?” Tom asked.
“Must have had a Huragok to help them out.”
Much as it turned Tom’s stomach, it was the only thing that made sense. He tapped his comm. “Chief?”
Mendez answered with a sigh. “Yes?”
“I think we’ve got mice.”
“Speak plainly, son.”
Tom hesitated. “Are all our Huragok accounted for?”
“Hold on.” Mendez came back on a moment later. “Every last one.”
“Any of them somehow wound up out at our current location at any point?”
Another pause. “Not according to the tracking system. Are you requisitioning one?”
Lucy shrugged. “Could a Huragok lock down the portal system so that no other Huragok could open it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think that’s something that’s come up before,” Mendez said. “All of the Huragok inside Onyx have always been under our control.”
Tom gazed at the dead gate. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”
CHAPTER 20
* * *
* * *
The hope Molly had for staying out of trouble didn’t last long following the Repository incident from the week before.
Everything went to hell in October.
When the UNSC failed to find the Servants of the Abiding Truth inside Onyx after twenty-four hours of intensive scanning that turned up nothing—or at least nothing they were willing to share with the general population—they lifted the lockdown on all Paxopolis and Pax Institute facilities. The city was still on a high security alert, and its citizens were advised to keep an eye out for any signs of activity that could be connected to the Servants. Given the size of Onyx, that they hadn’t found anything wasn’t terribly surprising, but it did raise a lot of questions.